Behind The Curtain
by StoneandSilence
Summary: Luther knows he was never meant to see the truth, the panic and fear Five kept locked so carefully away. Missing scene between Luther and Five, set during episode 5.


"So why all the way out here?" Luther asks, wanting to break up the monotony of silence. Five had barely spoken since they left the city thirty minutes behind them and Luther, well, Luther doesn't like silence. Not anymore. Not after all that time alone on the moon.

"It's quiet," Five replies, "isolated. Cha-Cha and Hazel are very dangerous individuals; the concept of collateral damage doesn't mean much to them. It's best for everyone if this happens as far away from other people as possible. Besides," he adds after a moment, "if we shoot their tires before we leave it'll take them a long time to catch up with us."

Luther mulls that over, stealing a quick glance at his brother. "So you were like them, an indiscriminate killer?" It's a point he's stuck on; he can't help it.

"We're all what the Temps Commission made us," he says, and it's the hollow, callous ring in his voice, the complete acceptance of those words and their implications that really unsettles Luther. This wasn't Five, not the Five he remembers. Then again the Five he remembers never would have pointed a gun at him. Not a loaded one anyway.

"Why not just shoot them?" he asks, not because he wants to kill anyone but because if his brother really was the hardened killer he claimed to be then surely that option was on the table. That he wasn't considering it might mean something.

The look Five gives him makes him feel small and stupid. "I need them to get ahold of my old employer and negotiations won't go very well if they're dead. Besides, if we kill them the Commission will just send someone else, and Hazel and Cha-Cha don't have a briefcase. That makes their movements easier to track."

He hadn't thought of all that. "Oh."

The silence takes over again, Five laser-focused on the road in front of them, that winding black strip fading into the distance. Luther barely makes it ten minutes before he _has_ to speak again, has to fill his world with sounds beyond the mechanical hum of the engine, the rushing sigh of wind. He needs voices. It had been terribly lonely on the moon.

"So what's the plan?"

Five sighs, that impatient tick in his jaw telling Luther he's growing weary of answering the same questions over again. "I told you, I'm going to get in contact with The Handler, try to make a deal."

"What kind of deal?"

"One where they agree to stop the apocalypse."

He asks the question that's really on his mind. "In exchange for what?"

"I don't know yet."

Luther isn't as smart as Five, never has been and they both know it but he's not a complete idiot either. "What aren't you telling me?"

But Five parries him effortlessly, "I'm not telling you a lot of things."

Luther huffs in frustration. It's always been like this, talking to Five. He was easily the smartest of the Hargreeves kids and he'd always known it. Always talked the rest of them in circles, that superior smirk forever hooked in the corner of his mouth. Luther had never been able to keep up, because while he was big and strong and good looking (had been, anyway) he wasn't _clever_. His intellect was an average thing; present but unremarkable.

And Five had never been able to resist exploiting a weakness. Their father had taught them that much.

"I'm just...worried about you," he says, not looking up because he doesn't want to see the scorn in his brother's eyes.

"I don't need you to worry about me," Five scoffs, but the words hold less contempt than they could have. "I can handle Hazel and Cha-Cha."

But it wasn't just about Hazel and Cha-Cha; Luther's concern goes far beyond the immediate threat. There's a reason he's here, chauffeuring his brother into the middle of nowhere. A reason he'd forced Five to talk to him back at Diego's place and a reason he's been low-key worried about Five for a couple days now and it didn't have all that much to do with masked intruders.

It was the look on his brother's face the day Luther found him in the van outside MeriTech. Five had been drifting, lost in thought and a million miles away but it wasn't a daydream. For the few brief moments between Luther knocking on the window and Five's iron will reasserting itself the facade was gone and Luther got a glimpse behind that impenetrable curtain of acerbic condescension and caustic wit. For a moment the armor vanished, Five was defenseless and he looked completely terrified.

Five had never been terrified of anything in his life.

That's why Luther is really here. Because he can't forget the panic in his brother's eyes, the way he'd sat frozen in place, fingers locked bone-white around the steering wheel. Whatever he'd seen in the future, whatever knowledge he'd bought back with him...it was bad. So when Five finally opened up about the apocalypse Luther didn't question it. Because what else besides living through the end of the world could etch that kind of horror into someone's soul?

He glances over again, surreptitiously studying the brother that should be the same age as him but isn't (and trying to puzzle all that out just makes his head hurt). He's the picture of easy confidence, cool as water and perfectly in control. Luther knows he was never supposed to see the unfiltered truth, the panic and fear Five keeps locked so carefully away. And Luther loves his brother so he plays along; pretends he doesn't know how haunted Five really is. Maybe that's not the best approach but it's all he can do. That, and believe. Believe Five when he says the world is going to end. Believe that he's come back from the future to save them. And if he starts to lose faith, well. All he has to do is remember that _look_, and he's ready to believe again.


End file.
